The first half of the new expedient was the extra-hazardous one; it was to connect the air-pipe line running from the compressor storage tank to the drills in the tunnel—and which had been broken by the slide—to the air-brake piping of the loaded timber car which was standing just as the retreating engine had left it, a-straddle of the half-driven rescue pipe. This connecting job was not a specially difficult one, but it took them all out in the open, and the blasts in the high cutting on the opposite cliff were still thundering at irregular intervals.
“Stand by to hand me what I need,” was Larry’s order, his former machine-shop experience coming handsomely into play; “that big wrench first—that’s it—now the first half of the union joint; and you screw the other half on the car pipe, quick, before they touch off another shot up yonder! That’s the idea; now hold the pipe up here so that I can make it on—good; we’ve got her!”
Dick Maxwell was not what you would call mechanically gifted, but some little inkling of Larry’s new notion was beginning to soak in. As matters now stood, the air-brake mechanism of the timber car was connected with the drill compressor so that air pressure turned on from the storage tank in the compressor shed would actuate the brakes exactly the same as if the car had been coupled to a locomotive. So far, it was all clear enough; and Larry quickly demonstrated the manner in which the new power was to be applied and utilized.
“Get a couple of ties and block the wheels so that the car can’t run back!” he shouted. Then to Dick: “You bring the tools and crawl under with me; I may need help.”
Beneath the car, with its stout armoring of timbers, they were safe from the intermittent showers of rock that were coming over and could work swiftly and to good purpose. Lying on his back under the car Larry swiftly transferred his chain hitch from the framework of the car itself to the lever connecting the air-brake piston with the brake-beam. Thus, by alternately applying and releasing the brake, with a corresponding shift of the vise-and-chain hitch each time, the life-giving pipe could be rammed forward into the slide.
“Good work—bully good work!” Dick cried enthusiastically, when the full size of the clever expedient dawned upon him. “You’ve got her dead to rights, now! You do the signal yelling, and let me turn the air on and off.”
By this time the pressure in the storage tank had been pumped up to its maximum and the safety-valve was hissing shrilly. Larry, lying under the car, gave the word, and as the air whistled into the brake cylinder of the car, the lever moved out, the hitch held bravely, and the pipe was thrust into the clay bank the full length of the stroke.
Deftly readjusting the hitch, Larry yelled again, and again Dick gave the needed twitch to the inlet valve. “She’s going—going right along!” the hitch-shifter called out from his hard bed on the cross-ties. “Now, then; once more!”
There were quite a number of the “once mores” before a welcome tapping on the buried pipe coming from the other side of the slide barrier signaled success.
“We’re through!” Larry announced; “they’re rapping on the other end of the pipe. Now a bit more quick work and we’ll have it!”